I solemnly swear this is all for the sake of fiction and I, in no way, plan to execute corporate espionage in the foreseeable future. 
Here's the skinny:
My protagonist needs to tail a character that is being secretly paid by a corporation to sabotage its opponent.
The problem is that my current understanding of corporate espionage is that, when it happens in real life, it's a much more long-term endeavour that probably involves discrepancies in paperwork and federal law, which doesn't make for thrilling fiction to teenagers (though I'm sure it could be accessed in a criminal drama).
I want the protagonist to discover this character while they're performing a single, illicit task. The character's guilt needs to be immediate and unambiguous without straying into implausible territory. I can think of a few long term strategies to topple a corporation, but I need a single incident that would justify ongoing surveillance.
So the question I need to answer is, "what sort of visibly illegal (or at least potentially immoral) single tasks are required to pull off corporate espionage?"
There are a few obvious routes, like murdering the CEO--but I want to see if anyone's heard of other cases in the news that might contain or refer to a single incident which would make a private eye go "gee, I better skip sleep tonight and keep following this guy."
Here's the skinny:
My protagonist needs to tail a character that is being secretly paid by a corporation to sabotage its opponent.
The problem is that my current understanding of corporate espionage is that, when it happens in real life, it's a much more long-term endeavour that probably involves discrepancies in paperwork and federal law, which doesn't make for thrilling fiction to teenagers (though I'm sure it could be accessed in a criminal drama).
I want the protagonist to discover this character while they're performing a single, illicit task. The character's guilt needs to be immediate and unambiguous without straying into implausible territory. I can think of a few long term strategies to topple a corporation, but I need a single incident that would justify ongoing surveillance.
So the question I need to answer is, "what sort of visibly illegal (or at least potentially immoral) single tasks are required to pull off corporate espionage?"
There are a few obvious routes, like murdering the CEO--but I want to see if anyone's heard of other cases in the news that might contain or refer to a single incident which would make a private eye go "gee, I better skip sleep tonight and keep following this guy."
